Canon autoramp is a mess after C - 2.0.0 upgrade [fixed in A2.2.3]

[zoom]

Hi,

The new version 2.0 ruined my two vacations. One in Hawaii, where the sunset autoramping stopped ramping. Now I saw another erratic exposure jumps in my recent Seattle trip during a sunrise autoramping.

I did not have these problems at all before V2.0.

Here's the last sunrise autoramping issue after updating to latest firmware,

I started with ISO400, f/2.8, and 0.5sec. There's no problem at first with the ISO ramping. But when it came to the aperture, the shutter jumped one whole stop periodically. I ended up with a flashing video. The scene was pretty flat smooth light with no cloud. I believe this is a degrade for V2.0

I am attaching the screen shots from the app, and the LRTimelapse application.

I updated the last firmware after I suffered the autoramping stop issue with the sunset. Now I have other new issues.

Init settings, starting with 0.5sec

Sunrise 4.46am initial.jpg (70.12 KiB) Viewed 9965 times

5:11am, shutter jumped to 1 sec, even though aperture was not done ramping yet. And the jump is pure erratic and repeated constantly (refer to the below LRT screenshot)

Sunrise 5. 11am.png (79.32 KiB) Viewed 9965 times

LRTimelapse shows these shutter jumps,

Sunrise auto ramping.jpg (83.64 KiB) Viewed 9965 times

I understand you guys did a lot of changes in Ver 2.0. But it seem most of the new changes are for your new 22' device and you are testing those new functions with the current product, even though some of them will not be available in the current products. This is unfair. I was enthusiastic about your product and provided a lot of inputs and feature suggestions in this forum, but now I loss faith.

Please please put back the previous version (before V2.0) of firmware and app available for us to download!

[PapaBear]

Hi zoom,

I don't want to sound too negative, but I have no high hopes on this one.

They have done a lot of rework, but I think they underestimated the complexity thereof. Or in terms of service speaking: rapid change = rapid decline. They are juggling with too many balls at the same time.

Too bad there is no update on the forum. They are absent, which is not a good indication if you ask me. Gives room for speculations and rumours. I try to avond that, but there are too many open issues here on the forum which still have not given a proper addressing into solutions. Consumers ccomplain. Not a good indication.

PapaBear out

[Oliver]

@Zoom,
sorry for the trouble!
That looks really weird, and is definitely the first time we've seen anything like that! We have not received any similar reports.

We'll look into it!

There's one thing I can note: a 3s interval is very short for autoramping. There's a chance that is at least one of the causes for your issues.
I actually see that your issues start here (pink circle) Where the Unleashed made too much of a correction. Could you send me the images for that range (including the first few jumps to the 1s shutter speed?) Or at least a screenshot where I can see the EV values for shutterspeed/aperture/iso for those images in LRTimelapse. That might help.

Sunrise auto ramping.jpg (88.2 KiB) Viewed 9950 times

And no, your impression is not at all correct - every improvement we make, and every bug we fix when working toward the Unleashed '22 also applies to the Unleashed '18. They literally have the same code-base. Some new features don't get added to the Unleashed 18 firmware, and transmission speeds are a bit slower on the Unleashed 18, but apart from that, the code for things like autoramping is identical!

So that means we're highly motivated to fix every issue you find with the Unleashed '18, because if we don't, that issue will also be present in the Unleashed '22! ;-)

@Papabear,
There's no reason to make such statements. We do try to reply to every issue here, but it has gotten so much quieter, here (a good sign, if you ask me - as people usually only post to complain or report an issue). We're also getting a lot of spam posts lately, so it can happen that I miss a notification for a real post every now and again. Because it's so quiet, I'm not on the forum every day but rely on notifications, which means unless there's a follow-up post (in which case I get a new notification), a thread can stay unanswered for a while. As you can imagine, we're in an intense development period, and are focussing on getting everything ready for the Unleashed '22 production. I'll try find some time to go through the boards to find the open issues that you mention in the coming days.

[Oliver]

One thing that's really weird: the LRT algorithms are implemented that they can only make adjustments in one direction, so it's very odd that after the Shutterspeed jumps up to 1s, when really it should only ever adjust downward.

[zoom]

One thing that's really weird: the LRT algorithms are implemented that they can only make adjustments in one direction, so it's very odd that after the Shutterspeed jumps up to 1s, when really it should only ever adjust downward.

I suspect this is a side effect when you opened up the ramping order:

>>ver2.0.0 >>[Added] New setting to change the order of settings to be ramped

>>"We don't yet have the UI for this in the apps, but it's implemented in our Firmware already! We do use it internally in the firmware, in cases where one or more of the three settings is unavailable, such as when using an old manual lens where the camera doesn't get Aperture information."

Both sunset and sunrise were working fine before updating to V2.0.0. I always use the smallest interval. I ever asked for 2sec in another post. There was no ramping problem before V2.0.0.

These one stop sudden jumps periodically is a serious degrade. I ended up with lots of overexposed frames. It ruined my expensive trips.

I will send you the images that your requested when I get to my PC. But meanwhile, is there anyway I can go back to the pre 2.0.0 version? I understand you want put more features in your 22' device. But that makes the current product unstable when you share the same firmware.

Please let us downgrade to pre ver2.0!

[Oliver]

Hi,
I'm really sorry that the Unleashed caused such trouble for you.

These one stop sudden jumps periodically is a serious degrade. I ended up with lots of overexposed frames.

Of course! In no way at all am I trying to say that this is fine! It's a serious bug, and we'll need find and fix this!

But going back to 1.4 is NOT the answer! There were several bugs in the 1.4.x firmware, and we had a lot more bug reports then than we have had in the past year! Some bugs stemmed from implementation issues that we could no longer fix, so that prompted us to do a complete refactor of more or less our entire firmware. We were already working on the 2.0.0 update for the Unleashed '18 long before we made the decision to launch the Unleashed '22.

One of the primary motives for the 2.0.0 Firmware (ie a major update, instead of a minor update like 1.5) was a new Bluetooth API, that was mostly incompatible with the previous one. This was necessary to alleviate connectivity issues we had with Android smartphones.
As we worked on this, we were initially planning to continue updating the 1.4 firmware. Unfortunately, Both Google and Apple made many changes in their requirements for new app releases in that time. As these changes aligned very well with the changes we were already making for compatibility with the 2.0.0 firmware, also implementing all these changes on the older 1.4 compatible app versions was no longer feasible. This caused quite the delay in our original release plan, as we had to make sure we got everything right from the start before we could launch any update at all! We were Beta testing the 2.0.0 firmware for a very long time before releasing it, and finally released it nearly a year ago. Before that, the last real 1.4 release with more than just a hotfix was in March 2020!
Everything we have been improving and fixing since then is only in the 2.x Firmware.

Yes, the big refactor did bring some new bugs with it, even some that we have had before, but in general, everything has gotten SO much better! The codebase is so much easier to work with now, so we can find and fix bugs much more confidently. And we'll continue to do so - also with your new bug.

We have fixed some bugs that had to do with the new ramping order setting, but this one does not seem to be one of them.
As I mentioned, the LRT algorithm shouldn't even be able to make changes in two directions - there's clearly something wrong there.
Until we find and fix the issue: Try some slightly longer intervals, and/or try the EV-meter smoothing algorithm! If the scene is so bright that you can get away with 1s shutter-speeds, then the EV-meter is actually quite reliable, in our experience (it does get unreliable when it gets really dark, for example when capturing starry skies)

[zoom]

Try some slightly longer intervals, and/or try the EV-meter smoothing algorithm! If the scene is so bright that you can get away with 1s shutter-speeds, then the EV-meter is actually quite reliable, in our experience (it does get unreliable when it gets really dark, for example when capturing starry skies)

Oliver,

I cannot afford trying new things during a vacation. 3 secs interval is already long to capture the light changes during a sunrise/sunset, and again this worked great before 2.0.0

I set the initial shutter speed to 0.5. The 1 sec was set errectically by Unleashed!

The scene is pretty flat and stable without any dramatic light changes.

[zoom]

Here are the details for the sudden drop (f2.8 -> f4.5) that you asked earlier,

Before the sudden drop, f2.8, 0.5, iso100:

f2.8.jpg (98.21 KiB) Viewed 9939 times

Right after the sudden drop, f4.5, 0.5, iso100

f4.5.jpg (89.69 KiB) Viewed 9939 times

There's no light change at all, but the sudden drop makes the frame much darker.

[zoom]

Here are the detail when the first sudden increase occurred,

From f4.5, 0.5 sec,

f4.5 0.5sec.jpg (93.34 KiB) Viewed 9938 times

to f4.5, 1sec,

f4.5 1sec.jpg (81.08 KiB) Viewed 9938 times

Why did the shutter go up to 1 sec? The initial shutter speed was set to 0.5sec for "Sunrise LRT modified beta". How does this has anything to do with interval (as you has suggested to test with a longer interval)?!

Please fix this degrade asap instead of speculations if we cannot go back to v1.4

Let me know if you need any more info.

[Oliver]

Hmm, that's very interesting. The drop from 2.8 looks like it's at the correct point in time (if you look at that sawtooth shape of the line, the vertical drop is pretty much where it's expected, but the odd thing is that it should have just been 1/3rd of a stop. instead it was 1.33 stops.
It then looks like that all those spikes are exactly that 1 stop (in the opposite direction.

I just saw that you used the Modified LRT algorithm! (LRT+)
do you remember if you added any adjustment value, or tried to do so? We recently made a change with the Adjustment setting for the Modified LRT Algorithm, and it looks like a bug might have crept in there.

Just an explanation for the short interval thought: We have found that it takes quite a while for Canon cameras to be ready for the next shot after finishing the previous one. The calculations for the LRT algorithms take some time, reading and changing camera settings is fast, but not instant. Add a possibly slow card write speed to that, and you could be cutting it close with a 3s interval and 1s shutterspeed. Of course we did implement everything robust to these restrictions. But since bugs are always unexpected, that would be the first place I'd have looked without any infos leading me elsewhere.

So, for now, switch to the standard LRT algorithms, and/or try to avoid the adjustment setting if you can.